Note 94 — Chapter VIII

The explanation of this failure, given by the same experienced writer, is worth quoting:-“If it be remembered that when the system is affected with chronic paralysis, the attempt is vain to restore any particular member to a healthy action, it will be understood that, to a nation devoid of organisation in every other department of government, a regular army was impossible. It thus happened that, notwithstanding the admirable material for soldiery which were offered by the hardy peasantry of Azerbijan, and the still hardier mountaineers of Kermanshah—notwithstanding the aptitude of the officers to receive instruction—notwithstanding that a due portion of physical courage appertained generally to the men—the disciplined forces of Persia, considered as an army, and for the purpose of national defence, were, from the epoch of their first creation, contemptible. Beyond drill and exercise, they never had anything in common with the regular armies of Europe and India. System was entirely wanting, whether in regard to pay, clothing, food, carriage, equipage, commissariat, promotion, or command; and under a lath-and-plaster government like that of Persia, such must have been inevitably the case. At the same time, however, a false confidence arose of a most exaggerated and dangerous character; the resources of the country were lavished on the army to an extent which grievously impoverished it at the time, and which has brought about at the present day a state of affairs that, in any other quarter of the world, would be termed a national bankruptcy; above all, the tribes—the chivalry of the empire, the forces with which Nadir overran the East from Bagdad to Delhi, and which, ever yielding but ever present, surrounded, under Aga Mahomed Khan, the Russian armies with a desert—were destroyed. Truly then it may be said that in presenting Persia with the boon of a so-called regular army, in order to reclaim her from her unlawful loves with France, we clothed her in the robe of Nessus.”—[Calcutta Review, vol. xii.] See also Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm.